Theoretical calculations reveal that when impacted by positrons of particular energies, spherical nanoparticles release unstable electron-positron pairs, with signals dominating in the same direction as the incoming positrons.

When electrons collide with positrons, their antimatter counterparts, unstable pairs can form in which both types of particle orbit around each other. Named ‘positronium’, physicists have now produced this intriguing structure using a diverse range of positron targets – from atomic gases to metal films. However, they have yet to achieve the same result from vapours of nanoparticles, whose unique properties are influenced by the ‘gases’ of free electrons they contain in well-defined, nanoscopic regions. In new research published in EPJ D, Paul-Antoine Hervieux at the University of Strasbourg, France and Himadri Chakraborty at Northwest Missouri State University, USA, reveal the characteristics of positronium formation within football-shaped nanoparticles, C60, for the first time. At specific positron impact energies, they show that positronium emission dominates in the same direction as the incoming antiparticles.

EPJ is pleased to announce that January 2020 will see the appointment of two new Editors-in-Chief for EPJ E, Prof Fabrizio Croccolo (Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, France) and Prof Dr Holger Stark (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany).

EPJ is pleased to announce that Prof Sylwia Ptasinska of the University of Notre Dame, USA has been appointed as an Editor-in-Chief for EPJ D, effective January 2020. She will be responsible for the plasmas section of the journal, and succeeds Prof Holger Kersten, who steps down after five years in the role. A faculty member at Notre Dame since 2010, her research focuses on understanding the variety of processes occurring in heterogeneous systems, including plasmas and interfaces. Though experimental investigations in her laboratory address fundamental questions, the goal of her team is to apply this research in areas such as energy, medicine, and industry. Sylwia Ptasinska is a member of the Executive Committee for the Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC) and is also the local chair of the next POSMOL meeting. She has been a member of the Editorial Board for EPJD since 2015.

The incoming Chair for the year 2020 of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of EPJ, Jef Ongena, President of the Belgian Physical Society, will host the annual SAC meeting in April 2020, in Brussels. The venue of the meeting is the Club Prince Albert in Brussels.

The SAC, with its representatives from physical societies in Europe, advises the Steering Committee in all matters that concern EPJ such as the scientific policy and conduct to ethical standards, nomination of new Editors-in-Chief, publishing strategies and the visibility of EPJ in the physics community. The Chair of the SAC rotates each year among its members. The close proximity of EPJ to physicists and the physical societies undoubtedly contributes to its good reputation, while the direct involvement of physical societies remains an absolute priority to EPJ.

A new prototype design doubles the frequencies of widely used telecommunications lasers to study the dynamics of cold atoms while in space.

By tracking the motions of cold atom clouds, astronomers can learn much about the physical processes which play out in the depths of space. To make these measurements, researchers currently use instruments named ‘cold atom inertial sensors’ which, so far, have largely been operated inside the lab. In new work published in EPJ D, a team of physicists at Muquans and LNE-SYRTE (the French national metrology laboratory for time, frequency and gravimetry) present an innovative prototype for a new industrial laser system. Their design paves the way for the development of cold atom inertial sensors in space.

Feynman’s research strongly influenced modern physics. Credit/copyright: The Nobel Foundation, public domain.

A review of lectures given by Feynman between 1946 and 1971 showcase the strong influence that his involvement in the Manhattan Project held on his research, while revealing an intriguing mystery surrounding one particular amplifier device.

Richard Feynman was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated physicists. In 1943, he began his career in the Manhattan Project, where one of his tasks was to develop a device which could count the neutrons produced by nuclear reactions. Neutron signals emerging from counters must be strongly amplified to achieve this, but in the 1940s, practical amplification devices were hindered by their distorted signals. To overcome the issue, Feynman proposed a theoretical ‘reference amplifier’, which could provide amplifiers with a standard signal to be compared with. Through analysis published in EPJ H, researchers at the University of Naples, Italy, propose that this line of research exemplifies the influence which Feynman’s involvement in the Manhattan Project held over his later teaching and research.

Graph showing the transfer of rotational momentum between positrons and molecules of methane (CH4)

A new theoretical study of the interaction between positrons and simple tetrahedral and octahedral molecules agrees with experimental work and could have useful implications for PET scanning techniques.

Antiparticles - subatomic particles that have exactly opposite properties to those that make up everyday matter - may seem like a concept out of science fiction, but they are real, and the study of matter-antimatter interactions has important medical and technological applications. Marcos Barp and Felipe Arretche from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil have modelled the interaction between simple molecules and antiparticles known as positrons and found that this model agreed well with experimental observations. This study has been published in EPJ D.

Neutron star’s mass-radius relation with and without hyperons. Masses of the pulsars PSR J0348+0432 and PSR J0740+6620 are shown with their observation uncertainties.

The possible presence of strange matter in the core of neutron stars has given rise to the so-called hyperon puzzle: hyperonic degrees of freedom are energetically allowed in the extreme density conditions believed to exist in the core of Neutron Stars, but hyperons reduce the internal pressure of the star, which then cannot compensate the gravitational field to sustain the most massive compact stars observed.

This work reports on the effect of three-body interactions when including a Lambda hyperon on the properties of hyper-nuclei and Neutron Stars. State-of-the-art three-body chiral effective interactions are introduced in a microscopic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock calculation.

This Focus Point introduces selected papers from the contributions presented at the 10th Congress of Italian Association of Archaeometry (AIAr) held in Turin (Italy) in February 2018, where a large parterre of Italian as well as International researchers shared their experiences on new and more consolidated analytical approaches on archaeological and artistic materials.

Different topics were addressed in the realm of cultural heritage, from characterisation and diagnostics to bioarchaeology and man-environment interaction. A strong focus was put on the comparison between non-invasive/non-destructive and micro-invasive methods in the study of different categories of objects, evaluating the pros and cons of each approach. Also a growing interest, accompanied by increasing technological skills, was registered for monitoring of environmental conditions to which the archaeological and artistic patrimony is subjected.

An existing technique is better suited to describing superconductivity in pure, single-layer graphene than current methods.

Made up of 2D sheets of carbon atoms arranged in honeycomb lattices, graphene has been intensively studied in recent years. As well as the material’s diverse structural properties, physicists have paid particular attention to the intriguing dynamics of the charge carriers its many variants can contain. The mathematical techniques used to study these physical processes have proved useful so far, but they have had limited success in explaining graphene’s ‘critical temperature’ of superconductivity, below which its’ electrical resistance drops to zero. In a new study published in EPJ B, Jacques Tempere and colleagues at the University of Antwerp in Belgium demonstrate that an existing technique is better suited for probing superconductivity in pure, single-layer graphene than previously thought.